1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and a method for monitoring actual room occupancy in real time and providing the room occupancy information for use in reserving and using rooms.
2. Description of the Related Art
Large organizations typically have a number of conference rooms for use by their employees for various business purposes. In order to manage the use of these conference rooms, most organizations use a rudimentary reservation system. Those who would like to use a conference room reserve a particular conference room for use at a certain time slot. Such reservations are typically made on a conventional on-line reservation system or sometimes “off-line” simply on a piece of paper.
Once the reservations are made, the conventional on-line or off-line reservation systems would show the reserved conference room to be in use during the reserved time slot regardless of whether the conference room is actually being used. Even if a meeting is canceled and the reserved conference room is not actually used during the reserved time slot, the conventional reservation systems would not be able to reflect the non-use of the reserved conference room during the reserved time slot unless those who reserved the conference room actually canceled the reservation. Therefore, those would like to have impromptu meetings may not be able to use that reserved conference room even though it is vacant.
Because the conventional reservation systems are not able to monitor the actual occupancy of conference rooms, they are particularly disadvantaged when the conference rooms are spread out over a large area. It becomes very cumbersome and time-consuming to manually monitor the actual occupancy of conference rooms dispersed over a large area.
Therefore, there is a need for a room occupancy monitoring system that can automatically monitor the actual occupancy of rooms in real time. There is also a need for a room occupancy monitoring system that can provide the actual room occupancy information available for use in a convenient manner.